Bilingual education in Spain: A critical review of stakeholders' perceptions

Abstract

During the past 20 years, the expansion of bilingual education programmes in Spain has generated a situation where the voices of stakeholders frequently go unheard. Accordingly, this paper is a critical review of bilingual programmes within the Spanish context. An analysis has been carried out on stakeholder perceptions, that is, of teachers, students, management teams, and families, as reflected in the literature published between 2014 and 2023. The corpus reviewed consists of 34 papers, ranging from pre-primary to higher education, with a particular focus on stakeholders' perceptions of the implementation of bilingual education in a foreign language (English). In terms of the characteristics of the studies analysed, the predominance of teachers' perceptions over other stakeholders and the scarcity of longitudinal studies and research based on national samples should be noted. The adoption of a more robust methodological design could provide a fuller assessment of the implementation of bilingual education in Spain. Nonetheless, this review highlights the need for specific improvements at each level of education if a more learner-centred approach to teaching is to be achieved. Such improvements could include additional training opportunities, collaboration among teachers, and measures to alleviate the additional workload associated with bilingual education.